Not the last anon, but I'm curious: as someone who knows Minato so well, what do you think of that popular theory of how some of Minato's actions had a darker, more calculating undertone to them? Like, how he married Kushina to emulate Hashirama, wanted access to Uzumaki nin-/fuinjutsu, and how he had a more Machiavellian side? I don't buy into it on a canon basis, but it as as some dark AU seems interesting, in its own way.
I've seen that theory around before (talking about the Kushina one specifically), and I don't buy it either (in fact, someone asked about it before, you can look through my asks for it!)
Did he have a colder side? Absolutely imo, even in canon, for war and missions and his shinobi life. But Minato has always been true in all of his relationships, there was never any dark undertone or machination in any of them. So yes, he did love Kushina to bits.
(I wrote some of my thoughts about Minato a while ago for another ask, and I do talk about his colder side over there, if you're curious)
About Minato marrying Kushina to better his chances at becoming Hokage (that's the theory I've seen around), that never made any sense to me:
First, whether people like it or not, the Uzumaki clan has never been all that important in Konoha, even though Mito was Hashirama's wife (they were quickly and badly introduced very late into the series just so Naruto had another thing in common with Sasuke, and the in universe consequences of this is that rarely anyone mentions them ever, no one recognize the name for the longest part of the manga, and no one cares)
And second, Jinchuriki have never really had that much political power to start with (going back to Mito, we don't know much about her but I'm of the belief that the influence she had was either becasue she was either Hashirama's wife or because of her own power, not because she was a Jinchuriki specifically), so Minato using Kushina to rise to power doesn't make any sense.
Plus, he already has a better thing going on for him on his way to "Hokagedom" than marrying a girl who is not even from the village: he's the sole living genius student of Jiraiya, one of the Sannin and one of the students of the Sandaime. He was probably on good terms with the Hokage himself since he was very young, so what more influence do you need? And that's exactly what ends up happening, iirc: Jiraiya is the one who recommends him for the position and supports him.
All of this doesn't mean it wouldn't make for a cool darker au, as you said. A lot of people vibe with that, and that's completely fair.
